Iraqis fear defeat without more U.S. help

Aug. 19, 2014
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A Shiite fighter loyal to Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, holds a position as they back the Iraqi army in the fight against Islamic State (IS) militants after retaking control of an area in the Jurf al-Sakher district about 65 kilometers south of Baghdad on Aug. 18. / Ali Al-Saadi, AFP/Getty Images

by Jim Michaels, USA TODAY

by Jim Michaels, USA TODAY

ABU GHRAIB, Iraq - Just a short distance west of downtown Baghdad, this landscape of farms, canals and date groves is where Iraq's battered army has drawn the line.

This is the line of defense protecting the main approaches to the capital against the committed, well-armed jihadists who have seized Fallujah and other towns in Iraq's western desert and pushed within miles of the capital. Col. Ali al-Majidi, a stocky brigade commander, says his orders to his men are simple: "I told all my soldiers there is no retreat at all."

But if the Iraqis are going to not only blunt the advances of the militants but reclaim the large amounts of territory the insurgents have seized, the army will need a lot more international help, mainly U.S. military might, Iraqi officials acknowledge.

"Iraq is going to lose the war without U.S. support," Sheik Jassim Mohammed, a tribal leader who helped beat back al-Qaeda in 2006, says bluntly.

"We need a lot of time to push them (militants) outside the country," says Mohammed Naji, a prominent Shiite politician and member of parliament.

Iraq's pressing needs create a huge quandary for President Obama, who has been reluctant to let U.S. troops get sucked back into a war here. He is pondering ways to support Iraq short of sending combat troops to the region.

He doesn't have many options. Iraq's army is not capable of launching a large counteroffensive on its own, Iraqi officials say. It faces potent enemy fighters who in most areas blend in with civilians, some of whom support or at least tolerate the militants.

Forcing a broader retreat by the Islamic State, which already controls large areas of Iraq, will be harder than the operation that resulted in recapturing the Mosul Dam from the militants this week. That battle occurred in relatively open terrain, Iraq deployed its most elite forces, and the U.S. Air Force pounded the militants with several dozen punishing airstrikes.

In most of the country, however, battle lines have been static for some time.

"It's been eight months, and Iraqi troops haven't been able to clear Fallujah - and it's just 60 kilometers (36 miles) west of Baghdad," says Zuhair al-Chalabi, a member of a development council in Mosul. "There is no way to eliminate ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, another name for the Islamic State) without support of the international community."

The militants took over Fallujah, a Sunni city in western Iraq, at the beginning of the year. In fact, much of the fighting in Fallujah and the surrounding area is being conducted by Sunni tribes opposed to the Islamic State fighters, who also are Sunnis but more extreme in their views of Islam.

"We can't stand anymore without American air support," Sheik Jassim said in a phone interview from Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province in western Iraq.

In 2006, Sheik Jassim, was a leader of the Awakening, a U.S.-backed tribal revolt that drove al-Qaeda militants from the area. This time, he is fighting without American support. He said Iraq's Defense and Interior ministries have supplied his men with weapons and ammunition, but he needs more.

Sheik Jassim says that in his area of Ramadi about seven tribes are supporting the militants and about 12 are opposing them.

Brig. Gen. Saad Maa'n Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, says he believes only 10% of the tribes back the Islamic State. "The majority are with us or in the middle," he said.

A key element of the emerging U.S. strategy is to support the tribes in a program that echoes the Awakening. It will be made more difficult without the presence of U.S. troops. Ibrahim says any such aid would be coordinated through Baghdad.

The Obama administration has said it plans to offer extensive support to Iraq's government to help defeat the militants, but it hasn't detailed how.

Nouri al-Maliki, a champion of Iraq's Shiite majority as prime minister, inflamed tensions with the Sunnis, which laid the groundwork for the Islamic State to move into Iraq. Now that he has been prodded to step down, he has cleared the way for broader U.S. support, the White House has said.

Haider al-Abadi, a fellow Shiite nominated to replace al-Maliki, has pledged to build a more inclusive government.

At the very least, Iraqi officials are seeking more extensive airstrikes, like the ones that helped drive militants from Mosul Dam. Ibrahim, the Interior Ministry spokesman, says the United States has a clear picture of enemy positions because the U.S. military is flying reconnaissance flights over the country, making it possible for targeted airstrikes elsewhere in the country.

The Pentagon has said it flies more than 50 surveillance and reconnaissance flights a day over Iraq. "What happened in Mosul could happen in the areas around Baghdad," Ibrahim says.

So far the White House has taken pains to say the airstrikes are limited to protecting U.S. personnel and providing humanitarian relief. Airstrikes elsewhere would be a dramatic broadening of the current U.S. mission.

Even if the United States did launch more extensive strikes, it is not clear that Iraq's army has the skill and fortitude to take advantage of the air support and seize back terrain from the determined and brutal Islamic State forces, battle-hardened by three years of fighting a civil war against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.

Iraq's conventional forces are in bad shape. Nearly a quarter of Iraq's army, which had been trained, equipped and organized with billions of dollars in U.S. aid, collapsed when militants attacked Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, in June. Army members dropped their weapons and fled, allowing the militants to seize U.S.-made artillery, tanks and Humvees.

The army needed thousands of Shiite volunteers to reinforce the army and help defend Baghdad.

"We need to rebuild the Iraqi army," acknowledges Naji, the politician, who has helped organize militias. Naji says the government has supplied the militias with arms and the volunteers have proved vital manpower to fill gaps in the defense of Baghdad.

Iraqi commanders acknowledge that morale was low in some army units and leaders were corrupt or ineffective when militants attacked Mosul. Al-Maliki had appointed political cronies to key military positions after the departure of U.S. forces at the end of 2011, according to analysts and Iraqi officials. "The collapse had to do with weak leadership," al-Majidi says.

The Islamic State also engaged in psychological warfare, bombarding the Internet with photos and video aimed at striking fear into soldiers as they prepared to strike Mosul.

"The Iraqi security forces collapsed psychologically," al-Chalabi of Mosul's development council says. The soldiers concluded that there was no reason to fight for commanders who were often absent from duty or corrupt.

Sectarian tensions within the armed forces also contributed to the collapse. Sunni soldiers didn't feel loyal to the Shiite-dominated government, and many Shiite soldiers weren't motivated to protect Sunni areas.

The Pentagon has sent teams of special operations units to Iraq to assess the needs of Iraqi's military and determine how best to support it. The White House has not publicly discussed their findings.

Iraqi officials and analysts say Iraq's security forces have a glaring deficiency - an inability to mount an offensive operation that requires extensive planning, coordination and a logistics system capable of sustaining forces on the move.

Al-Majidi said Iraq's forces have taken steps to address these weaknesses. "Iraqis used to just do checkpoints," he says. "Now they have more combat experience."

It's been costly. His brigade lost 36 soldiers and officers in recent months. Another 75 have been wounded. Militants continually probe his lines, looking for weakness.

Lt. Col. Shia Abbas Rahim, a battalion commander here, points to about a dozen bullet holes in his Humvee and proudly shows a scar where a bullet passed through his hand.

He says the United States has an interest in stopping the militants.

"We are fighting a common enemy," Rahim says. "This is not just an enemy for Iraq."